Italy

NOTE: THE NEW COALITION GOVERNMENT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ACCEPTED BY THE ITALIAN PRESIDENT TODAY, 21 MAY, BUT AT THE TIME OF WRITING IT STILL HAD NOT HAPPENED. CHECK.

From the European Union’s point of view Brexit, the impending departure of the United Kingdom, is a pity but not a disaster. Britain never joined the euro, the common currency used by most EU members, and the English were always the awkward squad in the EU’s march towards an ‘ever closer union’. Whereas the defection of Italy could threaten the EU’s survival.

Two and a half months after the election on 4 March, Italy is finally getting a new government. It is a bizarre coalition of the Five-Star Movement (M5S), a populist party of the left, and the League, a populist party of the far right. Moderates both in Italy and in the wider EU reassure themselves with the thought that it cannot survive, let alone cooperate, but they may be wrong.

There is actually a good chance that the new coalition will survive, at least for a while, because it is based on the ancient principle that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. And the enemy the two parties have in common is the European Union.

Until recently the M5S was promising to hold a referendum on Italy’s membership in the euro, while the League was advocating outright withdrawal from the EU. They have backed away from those extreme policies for the moment, but what they are promising to do will nevertheless bring them into direct and severe confrontation with the European Union.

The coalition’s ‘contract for change’, a joint programme agreed earlier this month, is a patchwork quilt of both parties’ favourite policies. It includes the M5S pledge of a minimum basic income of 780 euros ($917) a month for the poorest Italians, and the League’s demand for a flat tax of 15% on the incomes of middle-class Italians, and only 20 % even for the rich.

This will doubtless please a great many Italian voters (which was the whole point of the idea), but it involves an extra $132 billion per year of deficit spending. This blatantly violates the EU budget rules designed to keep the euro currency stable.

The Italian government’s foreign debt is already so big that only the implicit guarantee of eurozone membership keeps its borrowing costs down. A few more years of Italian over-spending, however, and the stability of the euro itself will come into question, so the EU will fight very hard to block the coalition’s spending plans.

A confrontation is also likely to erupt over illegal immigration, with the new coalition government pushing for a change in the ‘Dublin regulation’ that requires refugees to seek asylum in the first EU country they reach. For the great majority of the ‘refugees’ who make it across the Mediterranean each year, that first country is Italy, and most Italians want the
burden shared more fairly among all the EU countries.

That would seem to be enough dry kindling to get the fire going, and yet an open fight between the Five Star-League coalition and the EU will probably be postponed for a while. It
will get kicked down the road because the EU needs all the unity it can muster to resist the US assault on global trade.

The problem is not just the steep US tariffs on a variety of EU products that are due to kick in soon. The bigger issue is rapidly becoming how to protect European banks and companies trading with Iran from being forced to pull out of Iran by Trump’s promised ‘secondary sanctions’. That’s a sovereignty question, and the other big EU countries will bend over backward to keep Italy in line until this issue is settled.

In the longer run, however, a major confrontation between Italy and the rest of the EU is coming if the coalition government lasts. When it arrives, the two parties that make up the coalition are quite likely to fall back on their previous plans for quitting the euro currency and even the EU as a whole.

As Oscar Wilde remarked in a quite different context: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” For the EU to lose first the United Kingdom and then Italy would certainly look like carelessness, but it should not be seen as an inevitable event. More like a chapter of misfortunes.

The narrow Brexit victory in the UK (52%-48%) was driven by a generation of English nationalists (‘Little Englanders’) that is rapidly ageing out, while the great majority of the under-35s voted ‘remain’.

The great majority of Italians want to stay in the EU, but their general discontent led many to vote for parties that are (among other things) anti-EU.

Some new EU members that spent almost half a century under Communist rule and very little time as democracies, like Poland and Hungary, are back under authoritarian rule, and the disease seems to be spreading.

It could turn into a perfect storm that unravels the European Union, but cheer up. At least Europe would recover some of its fine old traditions, like picturesque dictatorships, ultra-nationalism, sporadic wars, and maybe the occasional world war.
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To shorten to 725 words, omit paragraphs 8 and 10. (“A confrontation…countries”; and “The problem…settled”)

There are actually fewer migrants crossing the Mediterranean and landing in European Union countries this year than in any other recent year: only 37,000 so far, although the flow will increase with good summer weather. But they are nevertheless the ‘last straw’ as far as some EU countries are concerned. Patience is running out.

Last week Italy’s new populist government stopped a ship that had just rescued 630 African migrants from the usual overloaded, sinking boats from coming into any Italian port. “Saving lives is a duty, turning Italy into a huge refugee camp is not,” said Matteo Salvini, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, in a tweet. “Italy is done bending over backwards and obeying – this time THERE IS SOMEONE WHO SAYS NO.”

Eventually the even newer socialist government of Spain volunteered to take the migrants instead, although they had to endure several more days on open decks in poor weather before reaching Valencia. But it may have been a once-only gesture: the Spanish are feeling very put upon too.

Around 2 million migrants have entered Europe claiming to be refugees since 2014, which doesn’t sound like an unbearable burden. After all, the EU has 500 million citizens. Turkey, with only 80 million people, has taken in about 2 million Syrian refugees. Heroic little Lebanon has let in about the same number, which is equal to almost half its own native population.

But there are three factors that aggravate the situation in Europe. One is that the refugees in Lebanon have the same language, culture and religion as most of the Lebanese themselves. Even in Turkey they tick two of the three boxes. Whereas the ones who reach Europe don’t tick any of those boxes.

The second exacerbating factor is that only a few of the EU’s 28 countries are carrying almost all of the burden: Italy, Spain and Greece, where the migrant boats arrive, and Germany, which took in almost a million migrants in the single year of 2015. (That generous act is probably what cost Chancellor Angela Merkel a clear victory in last year’s election and forced her to cobble together a shaky coalition instead.)

The final factor is that many of the migrants – maybe as many as half – aren’t traditional refugees fleeing war or persecution. They are simply people who hope for a better life in Europe than the one they left behind, and are willing to face great risks and hardships to get it.

About half the people on the migrant ship that Italy turned away, for example, were from Nigeria or Sudan. Neither country is at war, and Nigeria is actually a democracy. Even the great wave of Syrian refugees in 2015 was made up of people who were already safe, in Turkey or elsewhere, but chose to keep going because Europe was richer and freer.

So the humanitarian impulse is blunted by cynicism about the migrants’ motives, and the very unequal distribution of the migrant burden among the various EU member states breeds conflict both between and inside those countries. The politics is already getting poisonous – and this is only a dress rehearsal for the real migrant apocalypse, which is not due for another decade or two.

Even now many of the ‘economic migrants’ are really climate refugees, although they would probably not use that phrase themselves. The family farm dried up and blew away, and there are no jobs in the local towns, so some family member has to go to Europe, find a job and send cash home.

This phenomenon is going to get a lot bigger. Global average temperature reached one degree C higher than the pre-industrial average just last year, and it is bound to rise at least another half-degree even if we do everything right starting tomorrow morning. It may rise a lot more.

The subtropical parts of the world, including the parts near Europe – the Middle East and the northern part of the African continent – already have hot, relatively dry climates. Global warming will make them hotter and dryer still, and cut sharply into food production. These regions also have by far the highest rates of population growth on the planet.

The time will almost certainly come when large parts of the Middle East and Africa north of the equator will be unable to feed all their people, and far larger numbers than now will abandon their homes and head for Europe. Nobody talks about this in public, but every European government that does serious long-term planning is well aware of it.

This vision of the future colours every decision they make about migrants even now, for the tougher-minded among them know that the borders will eventually have to be closed even if it means leaving people to die.

Most European leaders are still trying to balance the immediate humanitarian concern against that long-term strategic perspective, but they are gradually losing the struggle. And some, like the Polish, Hungarian and Austrian governments, and now the Italian government as well, have effectively decided to close the borders now.
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To shorten to 725 words, omit paragraphs 8 and 11. (“About…freer”; and “The subtropical…planet”)

Gwynne Dyer’s new book is ‘Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work)’.

Lucky old Italy just got two Donald Trumps for the price of one. One of the big winners in last Sunday’s Italian election was the Five-Star Movement, whose 31-year-old leader Luigi di Maio has promised to stop sending out rescue boats to save migrants from drowning when their flimsy craft sink halfway across the Mediterranean. A “sea taxi service”, he calls it, and promises to send all the survivng illegal immigrants home.

So does Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League (formerly the Northern League), the other big winner in the election. “I’m sick of seeing immigrants in hotels and Italians who sleep in cars,” Salvini told supporters at a recent rally in Milan. He pledges to send 150,000 illegal migrants home in his first year in government.

It is not yet clear whether Salvini and/or di Maio will actually be in government. A coalition between the Five-Star Movement and the League would command a majority in parliament and is one possibility, but other combinations are also possible. However, it’s already clear that these two populists won more than half the votes on openly racist platforms.

‘Openly racist’? Di Maio and Salvini generally stop just a millimetre short of that, but Attilio Fontana, the senior League member who has just won the governorship of Lombardy, Italy’s richest region, has no such qualms. “We have to decide if our ethnicity, if our white race, if our society continues to exist or if it will be canceled out,” he said recently.

Now it’s true that 600,000 illegal migrants, mostly from Africa and the Middle East, mostly Muslim, and mostly young men, have arrived on Italy’s shores in the past four years, which was bound to startle the older residents. On the other hand, there are 60 million people in Italy, so that’s just one percent of the population. Why is that such a big deal?

You might as well ask why it’s such a big deal that an estimated half-million illegal migrants enter the United States each year. That is only one illegal immigrant per year for every 600 people who are already in the country. Half of those illegals aren’t even Mexicans, and yet Donald Trump won a lot of votes by promising to build a Wall on the Mexican border to stop them.

Both in the United States and in Italy, the real fuel behind the populist surge is high unemployment (the official US figure is a fantasy) and long-term stagnation in the incomes of the lower-paid half of the population. The immigration issue just serves as a visible symbol of the displacement so many feel as the economy pushes them to the margins.

The popular discontent and the political malaise cannot be cured by sending a few hundred thousand migrants home, even if that were easily done. In many cases, it is practically impossible.

The Mexican government currently cooperates with the US, so at the moment it is relatively easy to send illegal immigrants back across that border. The illegal migrants in Italy and other European Union countries are a quite different story, because their countries of origin will generally not want them back, and EU human rights laws make it hard to just give them parachutes and push them out of planes.

What we are seeing now, however, is a foretaste of the time when the migrant flows grow very large and the politics gets really brutal. In the not too distant future the Mediterranean Sea and the Mexican border will separate the temperate world, where the climate is still tolerable and there is still enough food, from the sub-tropical and tropical worlds of killer heat and dwindling food.

This is a regular subject of confidential discussions in various strategic planning cells in European governments, and also in the grown-up parts of the US government.Ten years ago a senior officer in the intelligence section of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff told me that the US army expected to be ordered by Congress to close the Mexican border down completely within the next twenty years. And he was quite explicit: that meant shooting to kill.

This was many years before Donald Trump came up with the Wall, and even today it’s still not needed. But one day it will be, because global warming will hit the countries closer to the equator far harder than the fortunate countries of the temperate zone, and the main casualty will be food production in the tropics and the sub-tropics.

So the hungry millions will start to move, and the borders of the richer countries in the temperate parts of the world will slam shut to keep them out: the United States, the European Union, Russia, South Africa, Australia. If you think the politics is ugly now, just wait

Of course, a miracle could happen. There could be early and very deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, so that most of the catastrophe never arrives. But I’m having trouble even believing in the Easter Bunny any more. This is harder.
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To shorten to 700 words, omit paragraphs 4 and 9. (“Openly…recently”; and “The Mexican…planes”)

Just one month before Italy’s national elections on 4 March, Luca Miniero’s satirical movie ‘Sono Tornato’ (‘I’m Back’) hit the screens all over the country. It imagined the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini returning to the Italy of 2018, and its timing was perfect.

“”The Italians, unlike the Germans, never dealt with their dictator, they have never removed him,” said Miniero. “Watching what is happening today in our country, I am convinced that if Mussolini came back he would win the election.” But of course, Mussolini isn’t coming back. It’s only Silvio Berlusconi again.

The Italian counterpart of Donald Trump has already been prime minister four times, and he has been banned from political office for six years because of a conviction for tax fraud. He is also 81 years old. But they forgot to put a stake through his heart, and Berlusconi is back in business as the man behind the right-wing coalition that may form the next government in Italy.

It certainly won’t be the populist Five-Star Movement, which refuses to enter coalitions with other parties. According to the last opinion poll, it will emerge as the largest single party, with around 28 percent of the vote, but that’s not nearly enough.

The governing centre-left coalition, whose parties are running separately because of their many disagreements, will end up in about the same place. Its biggest member, the Democratic Party, will get around 23 percent, but with various smaller allies it might make it up to 30 percent. Again, not enough.

Whereas Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (‘Let’s Go, Italy’), running in tandem with the hard-right, anti-immigrant Northern League, could get as much as 40 percent of the vote. If they then make deals with a few small parties that verge on fascism, they could form a majority government. Berlusconi’s great wealth, derived from his huge media holdings, would give him a dominant role behind the scenes in such a coalition, but he is legally barred from even running for parliament, let alone becoming prime minister. So who would it be?

The dark-horse candidate is Giorgia Meloni, the Trump-lite leader of one of the smaller parties, Brothers of Italy, but it would probably the Northern League’s leader, Matteo Salvini. You might call Salvini Trump-heavy: he hailed The Donald’s election as “the revenge of the people, of courage, of pride…and one in the eye for the bankers, the speculators and the journalists.”

Italians are quite justifiably fed up with the way their country has been run in recent years. Unemployment is 11 percent, but among the under-25s it is close to 40 percent, and over 100,000 young people left the country last year in search of work elsewhere. Average family incomes, which fell dramatically after the 2008 financial crisis, have still not recovered to the 2007 level.

But the biggest issue is immigration: in the past four years Italy has received 600,000 illegal migrants, mostly from African countries, and all the major parties are promising to do something about it. Berlusconi talks bluntly about mass deportations, and his prospective coalition partners in the Northern League actually put a number on it: 100,000 forced ‘repatriations’ a year, presumably until they are all gone.

The outgoing coalition government has actually managed to cut the numbers arriving by making a deal with Libya, the point of departure for most of the migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean to Italy. In return for subsidies for the Libyan Coast Guard and various other considerations, the Libyans have been persuaded to try to stop the migrants from setting sail in the first place.

As a result, migrant arrivals dropped by a third in 2017. That ought to have won the centre-left coalition some credit with the electorate, but since the number of migrants who made it ashore last year was still 119,000, gratitude for the government’s efforts was notably sparse. The centre-left coalition is the only major political grouping in Italy that has not fallen into the hands of populists – but that is why it is trailing both the others in the polls.

The Berlusconi-Salvini coalition’s highly implausible commitment to send all the migrants home resonates strongly with an electorate that has had enough of politics-as-usual. The Italian constitution makes it very hard to form a majority government without an even broader coalition, so the result next Sunday may well be a hung parliament and another election soon, but anger and despair could still give the two men victory.

Since Donald Trump’s election in November 2016, three Western European countries – the Netherlands, France and Germany – have had elections in which nationalist, anti-immigrant parties that are hostile to the European Union, or at least to the euro common currency, have done better than ever before, but have not won power. In Italy, they may actually win.
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To shorten to 650 words, omit paragraphs 10 and 11. (“The outgoing…polls”)